Category Archives: Classroom

Entering the Blogosphere

If you would have asked me last school year if I’d ever have a blog, I’d have said you were nuts.  I knew what they were, but didn’t see myself as a blogger; I didn’t have a story that anyone wanted to hear.  I wasn’t really sure what I’d write about–up to that point I’d only written for myself as the audience in my notebook.  So then if your next question would have been if my kids would be bloggers, then I’d have considered you certifiable.

So I guess you’re all crazy–and I am, too!–because my class has a blog, and my kids started their blogging journey this week, too!

Before I go any further, I have to give a shout-out and a thanks to Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp) and Karen McMillan (@mcteach) for providing many useful blogging resources to teachers like me who have a great idea but don’t really know where to start.  Their assistance via Twitter and their own blogs has been unbelievable!

Now for the story:

I have been talking up blogging since pretty much day one.  I started the class blog that you’re reading in July, after talking alot with my brother, who teaches high school math and just finished his Masters in Educational Technology (or something like that–sorry if I got the title wrong, Chuck!).  I have been writing for a long while now, but I needed another outlet.  At this same time, I also joined Twitter, and have been learning much from my “tweeps” ever since.  That’s actually where I got the idea for blogging with kids.

I was noticing that so many people were tweeting about updated posts by their kids, and so I started reading.  I soon learned that there a tons of kids out there who are learning super important lessons about writing and internet safety (and too many more to name) because they are blogging.  Even kindergarteners.  Yep, 5 and 6 year olds.  So the more I read, and the more I thought about it, the more I knew I wanted my kids to join them.  And so I began planning on how my 5th graders would enter the blogosphere.

We started on Wednesday, with a lesson that I called “Blogging 101.”  It was funny that I had to explain the “101” part to my kids–they had never heard of that before.  We talked about what background knowledge they had for the word LOG, and discussed how a log is a place where someone (like a pilot or ship captain) writes down important things that happen, organized by dates.  They were able to then transfer that idea to web-log, or blog, and we were in business.

They already have experience with this blog that I write, because we read it together almost everyday, and many of them have been following and commenting for months now.  I showed them several of the other blogs I follow, like Make It and Love It, the Candy Blog (that one is one of my hubby’s favorites, actually), Bake at 350 and Daily Daisy (and Caleb, too!).  We talked about what we noticed about both the appearance and theme of each one.  At this point they were chomping at the bit to get going–but there was another very important thing we had to talk about next: safety.

Thanks to an idea I found from Pernille Ripp again, we talked about why internet safety is like the mall.  While my students, who are 10-11-year-olds, don’t spend a lot of time at the mall or other places by themselves yet, they knew some really smart things to do and not do: not talk to strangers, not share their personal information with random people, only go where you tell your parents you’re going and stay there the whole time, and so on.  I was really pleased, because I knew I was going to be talking about how the very same things would keep them safe while they were on the internet on their own.  We talked through an internet safety plan, that they were to take home to share with their parents and have signed.

Next step: first blog post.  But not online, on paper.  They created a rough draft to tell about themselves, then edited and made a final draft on 9X12 oak tag.  This was serious business in our room.

     

    

After two days’ worth of work, we had finished paper blog posts and we were ready to learn about what makes blogging interesting: commenting.  I shared some guidelines, and we talked about what they were thinking.  I gave them some ideas for comment starters (shared by Karen McMillan on her blog Notes from McTeach), and my kiddos were great to connect some conversation prompts we already use in our classroom to this new learning.  Each student was given a pad of sticky notes, and the were off.  I turned on some quiet music, and they went to work.  They read, they thought, they commented.  For almost 45 minutes!  Yes, you heard right–45 minutes of silence and students focused on sharing their thoughts with their friends.

        

                     

After a while, everyone’s blogs started to become a beautiful rainbow of colored post-its, each containing kind and constructive words from their classmates.

Once everyone had had a chance to comment on blogs (and comment on other comments), we took some time to read what others had written, and then sat down to debrief and celebrate.  As we gathered in a circle on our carpet, I asked them to share with each other whatever they were thinking about what we had just done.  Here were some of their words:

I liked it.  I think this was a good experience for knowing what we’re going to do on our “real” blog.

I think it’s cool because we were talking with paper–kind of like having a conversation, but definitely different.

I think that it was really fun.

It was fun because you got to pass notes and you don’t get to do that in class normally.

It’s great that we got to learn something new while we were having fun together.

This reminded me of Harry Potter–like passing owls–we got to come back and reply to a note that someone wrote.  I really felt like someone was noticing me.

I was excited when Kelsey was replying to my answers, I had to reply back!

So we’re on to the internet on Monday, to be introduced to our kidblog.org blogs.  We hope to have our first “real” posts up by Wednesday.  I have to say I’m impressed.  I am amazed.  I knew it would be good, but it went even better than I anticipated.  It was so cool how engaged they were, how eager they were to share their thoughts and read the thoughts of their classmates, how kind and generous they were with their words.  I didn’t have to censor anyone’s comments; they were completely honest and gracious as they told each other how much they liked what they had read, asked questions to dig deeper and to encourage future work, and to make connections to what the blogger had written.  They commented on each others’ comments, too, and we even ended up with one long string of sticky notes that was about 10 long!  I was so proud of my students once this was completed, and am so excited to see what they do next.  I know it will be amazing.  Because they are amazing. 🙂

Enjoy our first finished projects:

           

               

                    

                                    

                  

                        

          

                          

                                

               

Wordles in Math

We’ve been busy this week.  We’re always busy, but I think for some reason we’ve crammed more than usual into the last fives days.  And it seems that a lot of what we did was new.  And very cool.  And involved technology.

We tried making Wordles again on Monday.  It was the start of a new unit on 2D geometry in math, so I needed to get a feel for what they remember from 4th grade.  Rather than do a pencil/paper pre-assessment, I had them create a Wordle to show me their background knowledge for this unit.  We brainstormed some words we might use and explain in our Wordles, and then got to work.

I should stop saying I’m amazed with their final products–by this point they’ve shown me countless times that they can do amazing work.  But that’s what I was: amazed.  And I learned much about what they already knew.

Enjoy!

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Just Let it Happen

We were in the middle of a really important lesson yesterday, when we saw this out our window:

 

What could we do next but this?

It was one of those moments as a teacher that I really hate–like when it starts to snow or rain really hard and kids act like they’re never seen weather before–but I decided I just needed to go with it. We do indeed have a construction site right outside our window, and it was, in fact, interesting to see a big crane carrying a massive slab of concrete or metal (or whatever it was) to put into the building that will hold our new gym and several new classrooms next year (yay!).  So rather than be annoyed and fight what was going on out there, we decided to stop for a minute.  And just let it happen.  Learning occurs in many ways and many places, and sometimes it involves stopping to watch a big crane.  🙂

“There Are Two Kinds of People in the World…”

“…people who like marshmallows in their hot chocolate and people who like whipped cream.”

I’ve decided that there’s actually another: the kind who likes BOTH!

Are you confused?  Or maybe you’re just thirsty now.  Let me explain. 🙂

Of course you already know about how much I LOVE read-aloud, and how it’s such a big deal in our classroom.  I tell you all the time.  But I’m going to tell you again, because yesterday we had another great read-aloud experience together.

We’ve been reading Who’s Stealing the 12 Days of Christmas by Martha Freeman.  I’ve been a fan of hers for a while, and this is actually the second of her books that we’ve read this year (in October we read Who Stole Halloween?)

                                              

So there’s a part in the story where the characters (who are trying to figure out who’s been stealing the birds from their neighborhood’s holiday yard displays) are chatting with old Mr. Stone.  He is making cocoa for them, and starts to tell them about how “there are two kinds of people in the world: people who like marshmallows in their hot chocolate and people who like whipped cream.”  What else could we do but see which one of those people we were?

I conveniently got some hot chocolate for my birthday (thanks, Archie!), so we were already a step ahead.  Then I made sure to bring the rest of the fixins’ with me that morning:

For most of the morning, the cocoa warmed in the big ‘ole Crock Pot as we waited for read-aloud after lunch.

When my kids came back from recess (on a rather chilly day), this is what they saw:

I had already gotten marshmallows ready in half of the class, because I guess I figured that there would be an equal amount people who wanted each kind of topping.  Just for the record, I believe our class was 9 Team Marshmallow and 16 Team Whipped Cream.  Oh, and then there was me–I can never decide, so I took both. 🙂

Then we sat down to read.

Ok, so I know there are some of you who are yelling at me about how this isn’t really related to read-aloud as a teaching time, which I am always making such a big deal about.  But I disagree.  No, the lesson today wasn’t about word choice, fluency or inferences, but there was learning happening.  We were learning about each other, and we were sharing an experience.  We were building our community and having fun while we were doing something we’d normally do anyway.  We were loving a story and making a connection with the characters in the book.  And in some ways, I think those lessons can be even more important than just the reading parts.  We’re enjoying a good book together and enjoying each other, too.

Missing Wordles Pictures

As I was so excited about Wordles the other day, I started the post before I realized that they were saved on my computer at school, and I sit with my laptop at home and blog.  Boo! 😦

So here they are–finally.  Remember, they’re about the Ancient West African kingdom of Songhai.  And they’re pretty great.  Hopefully you can tell what they’re about by the way kiddos prioritized the size of the words.

Enjoy!

More Than Community Service

Many schools participate in service-learning projects.  Ours is one of those.  But I’m not sure that until recently that I really knew what service-learning was.  I think that in years past, I’ve said that I did a service-learning project, but really it was nothing more than a brief activity we did related to a holiday food drive or because there was a hospital next door to our school and we thought it was a good idea.  Not until last month did I learn what I should have been doing in order to really call something service-learning.  And now we’re actually doing it.

Even though the name really does imply its definition, I think it’s easier to start by saying what service-learning is not:

  • It’s not just a one-time episode when you help someone.
  • It’s not an add-on to your curriculum.
  • It’s not logging in community service hours just because you have to.
  • It’s not just something big kids or grown-ups do.  (taken from information on http://www.servicelearning.org)

Service-learning is a strategy that involves meaningful, authentic service to address a problem or issue in your community, where your students learn and then reflect on what they’ve learned.  It benefits both the volunteers and the recipients of your service.

Ok, but how to you do it?  How do you make sure that you effectively combine the service part and the learning part so that your students benefit as well as the ones you are serving? Service-learning includes several important components to help make this happen:

  1. Preparation: As you prepare to do a service-learning project, your class (or school or Girl Scout Troop, etc) should identify a community need that you could address.  Brainstorm possibilities and then choose one.  After your need is chosen, then you will need to work to investigate or learn more about the need.  This can be done through internet research, reading books about the subject, talking with people or groups that might be involved in the work already, or a variety of other methods.  In the service-learning project we just did at our school, we focused on Veteran’s Day.  We had an assembly on Veteran’s Day where we learned more about what veterans are, listened to a current serviceman speak about his experiences in Iraq, met people in our community who were veterans, and sang patriotic songs.  We also read picture books and watched videos to help us get more information on the meaning of Veteran’s Day and why it should be important to every citizen in our country–even elementary students.
  2. Action: Not surprisingly, this is the step in which students actually do the service part of the project.  Again, this should be related to the identified community need, and based on the foundation built while you learned more about the topic during the preparation phase.  For our action step, we wrote letters to veterans.  Most kids in our school wrote to veterans in homes or hospitals.  We were lucky enough to have the name of an airman currently serving in the Middle East.  He was a friend of a classmate, and so we wrote to him and told him how much we appreciated what he does for our country to keep us safe.
  3. Reflection: Part of what makes service-learning more than just community service is the reflection stage.  Once you have completed your action step, it is important to step back and look at what has happened, what you have or can learn from it, and pay attention to the effects your project has had on you and those you were serving.  The reflection step of our Robinson service-learning project actually started with every student in our school receiving a letter of their own in the mail. Every member of our staff wrote letters to students–in their own handwriting, in a hand-addressed envelope–and then there were mailed home.  Later in the the same week, our class (and the rest of our school) sat down to reflect on how it had felt to receive a letter in the mail with their name on it.  The hope was that students could then apply how that might have felt for the veterans to whom we had written. My students did a great job of identifying how special and “noticed” they felt to have gotten mail addressed to them; usually the mail was for the grown-ups in their house or was bills or junk mail.  We had a great discussion about how our airman friend Mark might have felt alot of the same things when he received a big packet of letters from our class.  Our hope was that it helped him to realize that he was doing a good thing and that we had noticed.  We wanted him to feel proud for what he was doing to serve our country.  Many connections were made during our conversation.
  4. Demonstration/Celebration/Evaluation:After you’ve done the amazing work of your service-learning project, take time to celebrate it!  You could do this in a variety of ways, like by writing about what your students learned, in a journal or in a PowerPoint presentation.  You could create banners or posters around the school highlighting the project, coordinate news coverage about your project or post the project on the school website.  Here you also evaluate how the project went, and begin steps for doing your next service-learning project based on what happened this time around.  The celebration phase of our Robinson service-learning project is ongoing, really.  We have shared it on our website, and we are planning a schoolwide assembly in the spring at our school to highlight all of the projects that we will have been involved in throughout the year.  Our class may create Wordles about it (related to my post from yesterday), or blog about it (once we start this next week!).  No matter what we decided to do, it’s vital that we stopped to notice the work we had done and the difference we made!

So what will you do to participate in service-learning? Everyone can make a difference.

Wordles!

I mentioned last week how we had a great day in Social Studies on Monday.  Then on Tuesday, we discussed how to make the change stick during our class meeting.    So on Wednesday, it was really cool when we had another amazing SS time.  Not cool because I didn’t expect it, but cool because I did expect it to go well and then it did! (If you’re a teacher you know what I mean–a well-laid plan doesn’t always work out the way it’s supposed to!)

I had taken some advice from my friends as I planned Wednesday’s lesson: choosing their partners/groups, working together with them first, and doing the reading part of the job in Reader’s Workshop.  We proceeded much like we had the previous two days, but with the focus being Songhai (or Songhay) rather than Mali (remember: we’re studying kingdoms of Ancient West Africa).  But I added one thing: a new piece of technology that my kids didn’t know.  We made Wordles!

If you haven’t heard of a Wordle before, you’re not alone.  I hadn’t heard of one until I read about it from someone I follow on Twitter over the summer.  (Yes, I’m on Twitter.  More about that later.)  In a few words, it’s a word cloud that you create about whatever topic or concept you want.  I’ve seen them used for spelling words or other subjects, as well as to describe yourself.  The size of the words is determined by how many times you enter that word in the box, and then the bigger size implies bigger importance.

This is a wordle I made about me:

So fast forward to our Social Studies application of Wordle.  Each group met with me again during group time in Reader’s Workshop to read, discuss and pull out important information that they could use on their Wordle.  They had a plan, and then worked with their group to create a word cloud showing the important facts related to Songhai and their specific discipline (history, civics, economics, culture, geography).  Just like on Monday, they were busy, they were quiet, they were engaged.  (I know it sounds like my class is never any of those things.  That’s totally not true!  They really are an amazing bunch of kiddos!)

I have gotten such great feedback from my kids on this day!  They loved learning something new–both about Africa and about how to create a Wordle.  They’ve already asked when we can do it again, made suggestions for other places in our day we could try it, and want to try it at home on their own time.  Love, love, love what’s happening in this unit now. 🙂

(Ok, I realize I didn’t post pictures of the actual Wordles they made, but that’s because I just realized their on my computer at school and I didn’t want til Monday to post this!  I’ll add them later, I promise!)

Rephrasing the Question, Refocusing the Conversation

We had a class meeting today.  I know, it’s not Friday, but this was when we had time for it.  (If you’re new here or need a reminder of how we do class meetings, see this link.)

So we sat down, like normally, in a circle on our carpet.  I put up the class meetings flipchart and Archie got ready with the pen to mark our thoughts.  Today, instead of having the red dot count for things we thought we could do better on, though, I rephrased it to just be “things we want to talk about.”  I thought this might help some kiddos who might look at the list and not see an “issue.” Here’s what our dots looked like before we started our main conversation:

See all those red dots on Super SS on Monday?  Well that was related to the post about Monday’s Social Studies time and how well it went.  And unlike our usual class meeting conversations, they wanted to talk about it because it went so well!  YAY! As they went back and forth and shared, I kept hearing kiddos share how they thought it was a great day and why they thought so.  I heard them saying that they liked how they could work on the reading part in reading and then the SS part in Social Studies, how I had picked their groups for them (they admitted that often they don’t choose wisely and end up wasting their learning time), how they could work with me to make sure they knew what to do and then focus in to go and do it.  They knew that it was a good day and they wanted today’s SS time to be the same.  But then my friend Abigail asked a very important question: We know that we want it to be great again today, but it’s not as easy as just saying we’re going to do it.  How will we make it happen? I love it when a kid reads my mind and says exactly what I’m thinking!  So many times they just say that their solution is that they’re not going to do whatever we were discussing that the problem was.  And usually that doesn’t work.  Abigail knew that and was brave enough to call us on it.

They then took a little bit of time to discuss this, and made a plan for how they would go and get their work done in a focused manor again today.  And they did. 🙂

Monday, Monday…

Remember the other day when I told you that learning is messy?  Well yesterday was another day when that happened in our classroom.  But the reason I’m writing about it again is because besides being messy, it was again really successful.  Only this time, it was in Social Studies.

Mondays are very unusual days in our classroom.  At some points during reading you can look around and only see 5 or 6 kiddos, because of the schedule of pull-outs and other things.  And for whatever reason, Social Studies on these days always seems to be really hard for our class.

But this was not one of those days!  We’re studying Ancient West Africa, which is hard for many of us to wrap our heads around, since it was so long ago and so far away.  We’ve tried at least 3 or 4 different structures and plans to make this unit work for us, but it still seemed like we’d get to the end of the Social Studies time and feel like we weren’t any farther than the day before! Well, today we tried something else.

We’re working on creating class charts–think murals or collages–that highlight all of the things we need to remember for the kingdoms of Ghana, Mali and Songhai.  The thinking is focused around the 5 disciplines of Social Studies: history, economics, civics, culture and geography.  Here’s some that were made for the Cahokia unit:

 

Well, this time around the idea was the same, but I changed some of the specifics.  Instead of working in groups completely on their own to read, take notes and then create their representation, we met in small groups during Reader’s Workshop to do the reading and research part.  I went through the text with each group (each was responsible for a single discipline, all related to Mali), and we read and discussed what we thought was important.  A recorder took notes for the group, then before they left the table, we made a plan for what their group was going to make.  We decided right then who would do what, and then their group left to get to work.  Instead of squeezing this project into just one Social Studies time (I know–crazy, right?  I’ve had several good friends tell me how stupid I was to expect it all to get done in 45 minutes!), we used part of our reading block and added on our Social Studies time, too.  Altogether, they were able to work for about an hour or more one day, then finish this part today (Tuesday).

I’m not really sure exactly what part worked out the best, but I know for sure it worked.  Every group was busy and quiet and focused for the entire time.  And when we were finished and I said my usual, “May I have your attention please?”, they knew what I was going to say.  This Monday, unlike many others, we were all going home in a good mood, having learned a lot.  They knew it was a good time; it just felt different. Our buckets were full and so were our heads–with concepts about Ancient West Africa as well as how to work together towards a common goal.  And they came back today determined to figure out how to make it happen again.

No More Hungry Bellies

Our school is holding a food drive to benefit KirkCare, an organization that helps families in our school district.  Like any other food drive, kids are invited to bring cans and boxes of non-perishable food items to donate to the cause.  Here’s a little peek into how a conversation about the food drive went in our classroom on Friday.

First, a little bit of a back story.  Last week, a friend in our class decided to donate money for the drive instead of food (thanks, J!), and so he gave me $31.  I held on to it for a few days, and then decided I wanted him (and a whole lot of other kids–including my son) to actually see what that $31 could get at the grocery store, so I asked J if he would mind if I went shopping with the money he gave.  He was totally fine with it, and so I took my 4YO son, Riley, to the store with me that evening.  I wanted to show him what we were doing at school, and teach a lesson about hungry kids and helping others.

I explained to Riley (at a 4YO level, of course) how there are some kids in the world, and in our neighborhood even, who don’t have food to eat when they need it.  Their mommies and daddies can’t just go to the fridge or the pantry when they ask for something and give it to them.  Sometimes they have to go to bed with hungry bellies because there just isn’t anything to eat.  Irony or not, this whole conversation took place right at his dinner time, so I was able to connect how lucky he was that I could get his dinner ready for him at that time; I shared how much it would hurt me to have to tell him, “I’m sorry, baby, there’s no dinner tonight.” 😦

So off we went to the store, with the purpose of getting as much as we could with our $31 to help fill the box at school for the food drive.  He was really eager to find things that he knew other kids would like, and to be able to help someone else.  I was really proud of how he kept talking about what he was doing, and was excited to be a part of it.  We talk a lot about “filling buckets” in our family and he liked that he was filling way more than 1 person’s bucket with this shopping trip.  So at the end of our time, we had a cart full of food and a lot of people in our hearts who we were excited to feed.  I had Riley guess how many items we’d purchased, and he was right–61!  He said, “We can fill 61 people’s buckets, Mommy!” (More on filling buckets in another post if you’re not sure what that means.  In short, it’s about being kind and respectful to others and making them feel good. See the link I added for the book the whole thing is based on.)

Here’s what our class put in the box on Friday, between the money J gave me and some other things Riley, R, K and I donated.  Amazing, what a few people can do in one day, isn’t it?

So fast forward to Friday at school in my class.  Our librarian had shared several ideas for books and videos to show that connected with the idea of homelessness in our country, with hopes that our kids would understand more about why they should give to the food drive, and who they could be helping in the process.  We started with a conversation trying to answer these questions: Who will this food drive benefit? If you’ve already given, why did you choose to?  If you haven’t, why not?  This got us started, but for the most part the answers were really generic; many just knew that it was supposed to help people that needed it, and they had donated just because they did.  Didn’t seem like there was any real reason–it’s just what you’re supposed to do when your school is doing a food drive.

The next question I asked was related to homelessness.  I wanted to get an idea about where they were with who is homeless, why they might be, etc.  Most ideas that were shared put images in our heads of grown-ups who live in the inner city, who have a cup or something in their hand to collect money.

Next, we watched a Reading Rainbow video that focused on homelessness.  The book featured in it was Fly Away Home by Eve Bunting. We had already read this book, but our focus had been on practicing inferring, rather than the topic of the story.  It’s a story about a little boy and his dad who live in an airport because they can’t afford to find a place to live.  The boy in the story tells all about how they make it work and how they try to be invisible.  Listening to the story this way–hearing a kid’s voice instead of mine–and thinking of it through the lens of the food drive and helping the less fortunate made many of my kiddos think of the story in a very different way.  The same story–but under different circumstances–was more meaningful.

Besides just the story, this episode featured the story of the Castro family.  The children in the family talked about how they had lost their house to a fire, and after their father had lost his job, they couldn’t find anywhere that they could afford to live.  For two weeks, the family lived in their car.  That’s 6 people living in a small sedan.  For two weeks.  They shared about how their mom couldn’t buy milk for the little sisters in the family, and how they had to go to bed hungry and crying.  The son (who looked like he was probably the same age as my kiddos) talked a lot about being scared and having to move to a shelter. In the end, the family was able to find some affordable housing.

When we finished the video, we debriefed.  Many kiddos were really touched by what they had seen.  The feel in the room was a somber one, and there were real tears in some eyes.  I had them talk with their partner about their initial thoughts, and then we shared out together.  I was really impressed by how touched so many of them were.  They acknowledged that our original idea about homelessness was wrong.  L mentioned that the families in the stories were homeless because of something they couldn’t control, like a fire or natural disaster.  E noted that the stories were more about hunger than homelessness, and that you could have a home and still not have enough food to eat.  C and K were really touched by how appreciative the kids in the stories were for the little bit that they had (the boy in the Castro family talked about how he had done flips over the place their family finally found to rent).  We just talk about all the things we want, and how we want more and more.  They thought that many of us take lots of things for granted.

While I didn’t intend to, I found myself in tears many times during this conversation.   It just got to me, imagining having to tell my babies that I couldn’t afford to feed them–especially the story about the girl’s little sisters.  I know some of my students felt uncomfortable, but I could tell that many of them just realized it as an honest reaction to someone else’s suffering.

We talked for a long while about our thoughts, and I was really touched by the compassion in all of their voices.  I could tell that they didn’t see the lesson as a guilt trip, but rather as a challenge.  They left the carpet ready to take on the world, wanting to make sure that there were no more hungry bellies at bedtime.  They want to do what they can to help others.  Because now so many of them understand that when we talk about helping “people in need,” we’re talking about kids who might be their age, who might be in their classroom–kids in their neighborhood and their school.  For many, this was a big surprise; they think it happens to people far away that they’ll never meet.

So I’m excited to see what this means for our Food Drive box on Monday.  I’m even more excited to see what it means for their willingness to share even far beyond Monday.  I hope that the conversation we had on Friday stays with them for a while and spurs them on for further action.  We’re going to talk next Friday about a service-learning project that our class can take on starting in January, and I’ll be interested to see what their ideas may be.  No matter what they come up with, I know they’ll do great things to affect our community.